Get to Prospects FIRST with These Signals

We’re 10 days into the last quarter of the year. How are we feeling? We hope you’re approaching every sales convo with the confidence of Hannah Horvath:?

Know how to get your confidence to skyrocket? Zeroing in on the most important details about your prospects before that initial outreach. And there’s no better way than signal tracking. Today, we’re sharing three tried and tested signals that the best sellers keep their eyes on. We also have survey results for what time of day most sales folks are cold calling, details on an exciting (and rewarding) AI trends survey we’re running, and some ZoomInfo love from our biggest fans.?

Let’s dive in.

Sales Signals So Good, They Feel Like Cheating

Signal-based selling goes far beyond traditional lead generation or cold outreach leveraging basic intent data. Instead of waiting until buyers are clearly in-market, sales teams now can rely on a layered, AI-fueled analysis of multiple high-value signals to zero in on prospects who are strong fits for their product or service, but not yet showing classic signs of interest.?

The advantage is clear. Sellers who fuel their sales process with advanced signals and the latest AI tools create twice the opportunities as their counterparts, save up to 10 hours per week on time-consuming administrative tasks, and improve productivity by 60%.

How do they do it? We asked some influential voices in the sales world to share how they define, monitor, and respond to key buying signals to help them sell smarter, win faster, and erase nagging opportunity gaps in their pipeline.

Funding

Funding rounds are obviously one of the strongest buying signals — companies raise money to spend money. But according to ?? Tom Slocum , founder of sales consultancy The SD Lab, it’s not enough for frontline salespeople to merely identify companies that have successfully raised new funding — there still has to be a compelling value proposition.

“We don’t want to be the typical reps who say, ‘Hey, just got funding, how are you?’ But it is an indication that the timing is good,” he says. “They want to either build a sales playbook and refine their sales motion — because they’re about to double in size — or they hired 50 people and lost 20, because their onboarding wasn’t there.”

??Eric Nowoslawski , founder of outbound agency Growth Engine X, says that his team typically doesn’t even mention the fundraise when reaching out.

“I don’t want to start every email with, ‘Hey, congrats on your latest funding round,’ because then you’re just the same as everybody else. So we’ll pick another relevant data point to bring up about the company, but use the funding round signal to build the overall list,” Nowoslawski says.

Product Launches

Nowoslawski and his team typically use product launch signals as a starting point for further research — especially opportunities to preemptively solve problems common when bringing new products to market.

“Usually, we see product launches as an opportunity to say, ‘Hey, with this product launch, there could be problems you may not be sure how to solve. Let’s talk about how we can take care of that,’” he says.?

However, with hundreds of thousands of software products released every year, researching or responding to most of them using manual processes simply isn’t feasible. To solve this, Nowoslawski and his team use AI to scale their prospecting and outreach while leaning on their expertise to personalize specific interactions.

“A lot of times, the messaging we create that goes along with product launch announcements is basically using AI to talk about the product launch — but then also saying, ‘In our experience, these are the problems that often come with this type of launch,’” he says.?

Account-Fit Score

The AI boom in sales means that more companies are focusing on data accuracy. And sales leaders are quickly discovering that feeding poor-quality data to even the most sophisticated AI is a fast-track to failure.

The same principle applies to account-fit score, especially in increasingly automated sales workflows.

“First, you need to make sure your CRM is clean,” Slocum says. “You have your customers outlined. You have the right titles for the people that you’re closing deals with. I’ve worked at companies where we thought the ICP was one thing, and when we started closing deals and looked at the signatures, it’s a title we weren’t even targeting.”

The SD Lab relies on ZoomInfo Copilot’s rock-solid data foundation to avoid these costly mistakes. They’ve already seen promising results from Copilot’s Account-Fit Score, using it to identify similar companies to existing clients as a starting point for further prospecting.

“ZoomInfo will start feeding you things that fit the most potential,” Slocum says. “You want this title, this company size, this industry — and then Copilot will map everything that’s currently in your CRM and say, ‘Hey, this company actually looks like a really great fit for what you’re doing.’”

After identifying strong fits, Slocum’s reps surface companies in the same industry of similar size, revenue, and growth potential to clients they’ve already worked with. From there, they identify potential brand champions that can advocate for them internally, and refine their results using hiring plans, funding rounds, and other signals.

That’s just a few highlights of the ways smart sellers are leveraging buying signals and AI to sell smarter and win faster — we’ve got tons more valuable signals that can help you separate your best prospects from the noise. Stay tuned. ??

How are you using AI??

We want to hear from you!?

We’re conducting a survey on how sales and marketing teams are using (and feeling about using) AI to support their GTM efforts.?

This five-minute survey will support a comprehensive report looking at how AI trends are transforming GTM teams. But that’s not all! We’re running a sweepstakes where we’ll select five participants to win a $100 gift card.?

$100 for five minutes? That’s a great ROI if you ask me (or Liz Lemon).?

Survey Says…

We asked, you answered.

Our LinkedIn audience represents over 180,000 professionals. We regularly survey them to get a pulse on selling strategies, purchasing behaviors, and general thoughts on all things tech.?

We recently asked about their preferred time to make cold calls. Most said the hours surrounding lunch (10 AM - 2 PM) were their prime cold calling times. Early morning calls (8 AM - 10 AM) came in second,? followed by Late afternoon (2 PM - 4 PM).?

Whether you’re cold calling over your cup of morning coffee, or trying to get ahold of folks on their lunch hour, we’ve got some do’s and don’ts to keep in mind as you dial.?

Mailbag

This one’s for our #1 ZoomInfo fans! Want to be featured? Post about ZoomInfo on social and be sure to tag us.

Scott Sutton we love getting to work with you and the team at Later!?

Take it from Patrick, it’s well worth it.

Roman Velychko we love this feedback! ??

Thanks for reading!

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